All Roads Lead To Hell
by shady stays gold
Summary: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference. Follow Jamiya Marks of District Eight as she learns that all roads in this arena lead to hell.


**Let's skip the whole 'Holy shit I must be crazy, writing another fanfic' thing. I have writer's block, okay? I have to get this idea out of my brain. Plus, I love OCs. **

**This is what happens when cursed to curse gets writer's block, everyone!**

**BY THE WAY! This is the 31st Annual Hunger Games**

* * *

**xXx ALL ROADS LEAD TO HELL xXx**

"Right there," hisses Mica's urgent voice from next to me.

"The man with the gray hat?" I whisper back, readying my slingshot. The cold metal bench were hiding behind barely conceals us.

"Exactly," Mica breathes. "Make sure to knock him out." I nod, and squat by the bench. The Peacekeeper with the gray hat is shouting at our decoy, a little girl who I don't know well. She's crying and wailing about a nonexistent older brother with forty slips in the reaping bowl. She's doing a good job of distracting the Head Peacekeeper.

I double-check the slingshot. Then, without hesitation, I sling a rock at the Peacekeeper's head.

It smacks him right in the skull. He lurches forward with a groan, and topples down the steps. Our decoy runs toward us.

"Good job!" she squeals. "That was a great shot, Jamiya." I grin at her. I know that it's stupid and shallow, but I love compliments about my skills with a slingshot.

"Okay, what now?" I ask Mica. He runs a hand through his un-brushed mop of brown hair and shrugs. That's Mica for you- not planning ahead, just acting on pure impulse.

"I guess we get ready for the reaping and act like nothing happened," Mica tells me. Then he grins, a wide grin with a missing bottom tooth -I knocked it out when I first met him, because I thought he was a Peacekeeper. "Well, _you _get ready for the reaping."

"Shut up," I say, smacking him on the shoulder. "It's my second-to-last, quit being a bitch about it. I'm not going to get reaped."

"You can never be too sure," says Mica, growing serious. "Remember, we'd sponsor you if you were reaped." A warm feeling fills me, and I swear I could hug him.

"Tell Thimble I said hey," I tell him instead. Mica smiles again at the mention of his pregnant wife.

"The Union'll be crossing our fingers!" he says, starting to walk off.

"Next meeting?" I ask Mica.

"Why don't we wait until we know that none of you reaping-age members get reaped?" he asks, but somehow, I know it's not a question. He seriously expects the Capitol to find us out and start weeding us out from the regular citizens.

"See you," I call down the street. I stuff my slingshot and ammo into my bag and run through the streets to my house.

I pass the factories and run faster. The air is getting harder to see through, and it stings my eyes so much that tears ooze out of them.

Sure, it's fog. My family's house is out in the country, and we get a shitload of fog. But no, this stuff getting up my nose, in my eyes, in my ears, clinging to my clothes and making them smell like the factories, is nothing but the smog from the clothing factories.

My mother and father pray every day that we'll never have to move to the business sector of District Eight. They literally spend five minutes on their knees praying to God that they won't have to put me through the torture that was their childhoods.

I hear a bark as I run, and I slow down to a halt, automatically wondering if it's a wolf or a coyote. But no, it's only our family's sheepdog, Tess.

"Hey, girl," I say softly, patting her head. She whines, no doubt wondering why I'm not out in our fields, herding the sheep. "It's reaping day, Tess." I start walking down our rock-paved walkway to my house. "Let's hope the fuckers at the Capitol don't figure us out." Okay, technically, I'm not talking to myself. I just want to get out my feelings, so as me and my dog get closer to the door of my family's house, I talk quietly to her.

"I wonder what would happen if we could wipe out the Capitol," I think aloud. "Us Districts outnumber them after all. I what they'll do when we force their children to fight to the death."

Because that's what Mica and everyone else in the District Eight Union plans to do. We're going to have uprisings. After we've wiped out the Peacekeeper force, we'll hijack the trains and storm the Capitol. After that we're going to force them to participate in the Hunger Games. And not just the kids, either. People of every age. Every Capitolite. Until we only have all the 'victors' of the Capitol Games. Then we kill them all.

Yeah, we have this planned out a lot. And I'm proud to say that I'm part of the Union.

I open the door and make sure Tessa doesn't come into our house. She'd track mud everywhere. She lives outside, in our fields.

I welcome the heat, because of the cold outside. My parents sit in their worn chairs by our fireplace, toasting bread for us to eat. My mother, Maya, smiles at me as I rip off my sweatshirt and hang it up on our coat rack.

"Would you like some toast before you get dressed, Jamiya?" she asks kindly, her round, dark-skinned face beaming at me.

"Nah, I already ate," I say, rubbing my hands together to warm them. "Well, see you, I'm going to get dressed."

"Your mother made you something to wear," says my father, Jack. I force a smile in his and Mom's direction. When they're sitting together like this, it's hard not to smile.

I think about them as I walk down the hall to my room. My mother was born in the busines sector, and worked in the factories until she met my father. She didn't quit her job there for him, though- it was because there was a fire in the factory and her father died. My mother was practically starving during her days as a factory worker making clothes, but over the years herding sheep and knitting, she's filled out quite a bit. She has my chocolate brown skin and full lips.

My father met my mother during the funeral of all that had lost their lives in the factory accident. It turned out that my grandfather, his father, was working as the undertaker's assistant at the time. Mom tells me the story all the time- she was crying and not looking where she was going when she was walking home, and she ran into my father. Literally, she fell on top of him and sprained his wrist. Ever since then, for some reason, they'd been in love. My father has slightly darker skin than my mother and is thin. I've inherited the thin-ness, and his straight hair. My mother's hair is curly.

Why I appreciate them sitting together so much is because of their dwindling relationship. My mom got pregnant with me, and they were still a happy couple. Then I was born.

I was another mouth to feed. I was hard to take care of. And, as I got older, I got more and more unmanageable. I was a problem child, I guess. I would always trespass onto other people's property, I'd ask the Peacekeepers why the Capitol had to kill so many people just to get their anger out at the Districts. And right now, though I'm seventeen, I'm just as much of a problem.

So Mom and Dad argued about -what else- but me. Mom would say that she cooked all the meals in the house. Dad would interject that he only ate them out of politeness and that I was getting too thin. Mom would say that Dad, who trains me to herd the sheep, was working me to death. Dad would tell Mom that she let me go into town and get into trouble too much. And on, and on. Sometimes when I heard Dad saying that he would kick Mom out of the house and let me live with him, I would feel sick to my stomach.

I walk into my room. My room has no door -it got termites, and my dad chucked it out of the house before the termites could eat into the rest of our house. I narrow my eyes at the wicker chair in the corner of my room.

My best pair of jeans lie folded there, but on top of it is a new shirt, a white T-shirt. I see something else, under the jeans, and lift them up to find a gray sweatshirt.

I feel a rush of gratitude for my mother. It must've taken her months to make the shirt and sweatshirt. And just so I could wear it to the reaping?

_Maybe I should've thanked her more_, I think as I get dressed in my reaping outfit.

* * *

I'm one of the last to arrive at the reaping. Having no clock at our house, and having my parents staying home -someone has to keep watch over the sheep we raise and shear for money- always makes me late.

I run into the crowd of seventeen-year-olds. My friends from the Union try to act like they don't know me, because we don't want to look attached. Otherwise the Capitol will know who's in the Union and who isn't. In front of me are my two best friends, Annmarie and Bobbin. I act like I've never seen them before.

"And now we'll draw the boy tribute to represent District Eight in the Thirty-First Annual Hunger Games!" squeals the escort. I try to tone her out, but something bring me back to reality when there's a sharp jab in my stomach. I instantly reach for a rifle I don't carry right now, because I'm so used to shooting at predators that could kill my family's sheep.

But it's only the hand of Bobbin. I look curiously at her. She nods down at her hand and I realize she's trying to give something to me. I take the object and see that it's... a carved piece of wood? Then I look closer. It's attached to a long black ribbon. The piece of wood is carved to be square. I see something carved into it and see that it says, in squarish block letters, D8.

I look up at Bobbin curiously. "We all have one," she whispers. "Our symbol." So this is it. Mica has talked for months about getting a symbol of our Union, but he never has. I guess Bobbin decided to take action. I smile at her, but my smile is wiped off my face a split second later.

"Tristan Goodman!" calls out our Capitol escort.

I freeze in place as Tristan, a blond guy with a slight limp, hobbles up onto the stage.

Tristan is from our Union.

In front of me, Annmarie and Bobbin are just as shocked as I am. No one from the Union has ever been reaped before. If you take tessera -any at all- then we forbid you from joining the Union until you're past reaping age.

Of course, it could be chance. Even one slip is enough to get drawn. But when I see the escort smiling hugely at us, like she has a special surprise, I know that this isn't an accident.

We've been found out.

I quickly rule out Union members. One by one I eliminate them. Are they too old to be reaped? Too young? But I already know, thanks to Mica's endless mocking me about still being a baby, practically. I'm one of the only female, reaping-age Union members. It's only me and a thirteen year old that only is in the Union because she's so unnoticeable that she's a good sneak. A thirteen year old girl.

I look through the crowd to the thirteen year old section and find her. I only see her because she's at the back of the square like me, she's so short. She's trembling, literally. She's that scared.

So as the escort clears her throat and reaches into the reaping bowl for a slip, I feel myself moving forward in the crowd, walking quickly. And I find myself saying, "I volunteer as tribute!" just as our escort says, "Jamiya Marks!"

The escort looks shocked. "Um... very eager, aren't we?" she asks. I feel my anger building up. At myself. At my parents. At my friends. Even at my precious Union for reassuring me that I wouldn't be reaped. But especially at the Capitol. "What's your name?" I look into the artificially dyed eyes of my new escort and don't see a human. I see a fucking _mutt_.

"I think you just said it," I snap at her. Her eyes widen. I relish the feeling of knowing that I was the one that shocked her. That I'm different. "And I just would like to say something before your fucking Capitol kills me, so give the the damn mic." She doesn't need to. She drops it and backs up nervously like she's scared of me. Like I could hurt her. I can't hurt _her_, specifically... yet.

"Do you ever look at the population of the Districts, verses the Capitol? Do you ever see that we outnumber you literally by thousands? Do you ever realize that we aren't all your stupid, Capitol-worshiping, obedient slaves?" I say. "That we could take you down any day? Any hour?" I pause. "Right now?" The crowd looks nervously at me. "Well, you know that, because you reaped Tristan and I. And we're both proud to say that we're going to die rebels."

I would say more, but then a Peacekeeper wrestles the mic away from me and starts to drag me offstage. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Tristan struggling in a Peacekeeper's strong arms.

To my surprise, we're not headed to the Justice Building. We're headed toward our flimsy train station.

"You can't do this!" Tristan yells, fighting against the Peacekeepers. "We get our goodbyes, it's the goddamn law!"

But apparently not for us rebels.

As we force-board the train, I look behind me and see my parents looking at me helplessly. I feel tears pricking at my eyelids, and I try to tell myself not to cry.

As soon as we're on the train, I rush down the hall into a room marked FEMALE TRIBUTE and let the tears flow.

Even though I don't want to, something makes me look out the window back at my district.

And my last impression? My father punching my mother across the face.

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**First of all, I'm sorry. I know that it was choppy, but you're going to get a good-flowed backstory later, I promise. **

**Second, I would really like reviews for this. :D I want to know if I'm doing any good. **


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